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One thing making our lives complicated:

Our street is under major construction at the moment. Our water main broke at the beginning of August, sending an exciting 50-foot arc of water spraying into the air. As it turns out, our water main was built in 1917, so the city has decided that 95 years of deferred maintenance is probably enough and is spending the next six weeks replacing it.

It's making life difficult of course, since while it's still possible to drive on the street, whether or not we'll be able to get out during construction hours is a crapshoot. But it's interesting to see what a child's paradise our street has become. It's normally very busy, but now it's completely blocked off to through traffic and kids feel free to roam the street. I had no idea there were so many bikes on the street before now. So this is what it's like to live on a quiet suburban cul de sac.

Two reasons I'm proud of Katherine:

1. As we were on the last mile of driving home from Michigan, and I saw that the empty restaurant space in a local mall that excited us with recent construction, was going to be... Hooters. Katherine heard our disgusted reaction and asked what was wrong with "the owl restaurant." Hedging a little, I responded, "They aren't very nice to their waitresses." Katherine's reply: "Well, we won't ever go there then."

No, we most certainly will not, but I'm proud of her for deciding that on her own (she also hasn't mentioned Chik-fil-a once since I explained to her why we don't go there, which also makes me proud).

2. During math this morning, she was asked to solve 9 + _ = 17. Helping her out, I pointed out to her that she had recently solved 9 + 9 = 18, so what did she think you would add to 9 to get 17? She thought for about a second and said "8." Go kid! Now _that's_ what we're aiming for with math - not just mechanical adding and subtracting, but really seeing how the numbers fit together, and being able to figure out that since seventeen is one less than eighteen, you would need to add one less than nine to nine to get seventeen.

Man, I love our math curriculum.

The three step process that reveals the depth of my baby-brain deficit:

The birthday check B received from my mother and deposited in the atm was sent back to us because my mother forgot to sign it.

Reaction 1: What a pain, we'll have to send it back to my mother to sign or get her to send another and it will take forever, etc.

Reaction 2: What a shame I didn't catch it before we tried to deposit it. I have power of attorney for my mother and I could have signed it.

Reaction 3, a truly embarrassing number of minutes later: Hey, I have power attorney. I can sign it NOW.